


But neither should you walk the earth alone

by phalangine



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, hello this is your obligatory reminder that charles halford is a very tall man with very big hands, somehow there isn't a single seaman joke to be found
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18938359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalangine/pseuds/phalangine
Summary: Chas’ eyes flick to his left ring finger, which is suddenly free of his wedding band.





	But neither should you walk the earth alone

**Author's Note:**

> hello i've watched the supercut i made for myself of the quality gay content in _the terror_ a lot bc i enjoy crying, but instead of writing something interesting and moving, here's an incoherent ramble of roughly 3.5k words that only relates to the terror in the sense that sailing is mentioned and nobody has a cellphone
> 
> eta: i stole the title from an elbow song. please don’t hold that against the song

It’s been almost eighteen months since John set foot in America. It’s the same as he left it- full of brassy accents and filthy streets and rumbling with unease- which is good. The country reminds John of being at sea; it stays almost aggressively the same until, suddenly, the temperature changes and there’s mourning to do. Celebration, too, sometimes, if the Yanks got lucky and did something right.

After all his traveling, John is still sure the best place to weather America is New York City. It’s as weird as he was promised and full of the strange sorts of people that flock to big cities looking to disappear. They’re a universal truth, but New York seems to draw them in and make them bold in a way few cities can claim to do.

John isn’t interested in that at the moment, though he might be later. He’s winding his way through Manhattan because there’s a little pub he’s been coming to for nearly two decades that’s home to a specific sort of company he can’t get anywhere else.

He doesn’t even have time to wipe the dirt off his trousers before the bartender materializes and calls his name.

“You’re gonna crush me ribs, mate,” John wheezes as he’s pulled into a crushing hug. He’s squeezing back just as hard, but that’s neither here nor there. “Gonna do what Mother Nature couldn’t, are you?”

Chas laughs as he steps back, releasing John from a hug that wasn’t half as bad as John pretended.

“Since you broke into my bar, you’d deserve it if I did,” Chas replies. There’s more humor in his voice than John’s heard in a long time, and Chas’ eyes are softer than John remembered as he looks John over.

Or maybe it was the year and a half John spent on a ship in the Atlantic with nothing to stop his imagination from warping his memories into easier packages to sort and shuffle.

It’s easier to leave when you don’t have to think of it as a place where part of you wants to return. John can go back out to sea without fearing he’d come back and find he’d been forgotten when there’s nothing he’s expected to come back to.

“You got another tattoo.”

Chas lifts John’s arm, one giant hand cradling John’s elbow as the other rotates John’s wrist, giving Chas a better look at the latest addition to John’s skin.

There was a time when Chas had spent his days on ships, but unlike John and their fellow sailors, he’d never let a needle touch his skin except to weave it back together. Even that had been a rarity; the evidence of Chas’ time at sea is in his calluses, his skin nearly unblemished despite his years working with blades and drinking with John.

Next to him, John would look something other than human. His back is more the color of ink than flesh; his arms and chest have more runes than a Viking dictionary.

The one Chas noticed is the lowest on John’s right arm. Situated just below the crease of his elbow, laid out over the sensitive skin of his inner forearm, the tattoo is more than visible with John down to his sleeveless undershirt.

“You like it?” John asks. His voice comes out too soft, but it’s reflexive. Chas is still as handsome as he was when John saw him last, his features sharper now that John isn’t relying on memory, and John still likes having him close.

They’re too close as it is. John can smell the soap Chas used this morning; after spending so long without the luxury of getting clean at will, Chas likes being his own captain.

They’re best mates, and John has had more of Chas than he rightly deserves. He wants Chas to come even closer anyway.

The pads of Chas’ fingers are rough as he traces the curling lines of the sigil, but his touch is soft.

John almost didn’t get the tattoo; it had to be done by a particular old woman who lives at the top of a remote mountain on one of the less traveled islands in the Caribbean. The captain- John’s forgotten his name already, if he ever knew it- had gotten impatient and tried to rush them out of port early.

They had stayed in the end, though, and John had climbed that mountain to see that old woman. And after five minutes of reciting John’s shortcomings as a warlock, she had told him to roll up his sleeve and have a sip of tea.

She could have told him sit down first, considering she was giving him vision tea. It would have been polite.

His skin still smarts, but it was worth it for the reassurance. Even the slipperiest bastard from hell will have to work bloody hard if it wants to find John.

The human bastards won’t be put off by it, but John can handle them on his own.

“Geraldine will start asking for one of her own again if she sees it,” Chas tells him without looking up from John’s arm. He sounds tired already.

John hums. “That was an obvious non-answer, you know.”

Chas glances at him, and for a heartbeat, John thinks this is it. The moment they’ve been hurtling toward and around for years. The moment John and Chas decide, for good, what they are to each other.

Then Chas looks away and John has to fight a sigh.

He knows Chas too well to have thought Chas would let him have a resolution so easily, he thinks. It’s a wonder Renee managed to get him to propose to her- Chas will happily commit to the frustration of ambiguity if it means not having to talk.

“Still opposed to letting a ten-year-old get a tattoo?” John asks, pushing aside the twinge in his chest that always comes with returning to Chas and finding himself welcomed back. Not with the kind of warmth John might have wanted but with enough to make his treacherous heart think of this as home.

“That’s one of my objections, yes,” Chas says. He’s abandoned the new tattoo and moved onto older ones, but his touch is as light as it was with the new one.

John lets him touch without commenting. The sea has been home to John more than anything on land ever has, and the close quarters and closer encounters with death suit him  fine. But it’s difficult to spend so long living and fighting beside so many other men with so little contact.

Maybe it’s a side effect of growing up the way he did. Something not quite right because his mum wasn’t there but his father was. Or maybe it’s just another defect he was born with. The cause doesn’t really matter. John craves attention like he craves cigarettes, and a ship’s a bad place to get attention the way he wants.

Chas’ attention comes with fewer complications and greater focus on John.

“Someone knew what they were doing this time,” Chas observes.

John nods, something in his chest loosening. “A fact she did not let me forget.”

Chas huffs a laugh. “Good. Someone should annoy you instead of the other way around.”

“You say that like you don’t annoy me constantly.”

Chas’ smile doesn’t make John’s heart stutter, but that’s only because Chas lets go of John’s arm and John’s disappointment dampens the warmth of Chas’ smile.

“How long are you here this time?” Chas asks.

John hums. “Not gonna buy a bloke a drink before you ask him for his story? That’s bad form, mate.”

“It’s ten in the morning. You’re lucky I was here taking stock.”

John rocks back on his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets as he gives Chas a winning smile.

“One beer,” Chas says, rolling his eyes. “But you’re not getting anything expensive.”

John nods and follows Chas to the bar, settling himself on a stool and watching Chas reach for a pint glass. It’s a familiar, comforting sight- Chas fills up the space behind the counter in a good way, every extra inch of him bringing a little life to the quiet rows of bottles and taps as he gets John’s drink.

He’s a good bartender, and it’s not just because he lets John drink outside hours.

The problem is, good bartenders inspire people to talk.

The bigger problem is, John has things to say.

Chas sets the glass on the counter and nudges it toward John. “Let’s hear your story, then.”

John intends to make him wait. He intends to sip his beer and tease Chas with bits of John’s life. He intends to have fun.

But Chas has his palms braced on the bar top, arms spread, and his fingers lying on top of the counter, and John realizes he isn't the one with an important story to tell.

Placing his pint on the bar, he says, “Your ring’s gone.”

Chas’ eyes flick to his left ring finger, which is suddenly free of his wedding band.

He lifts that hand, his thumb rubbing almost absently at the strip of skin at the base of his ring finger where the ring used to sit.

The sight is jarring, but it shouldn’t be. Chas and Renee has been unhappy for longer than either of them will admit. John saw the signs despite their attempts to cover over the discord: Renee’s silences, the empty space that only grew wider between their bodies, Chas’ fraying temper… And the worst of it- Geraldine’s uncertainty, the little girl just old enough to understand that there was unhappiness waiting for them but not old enough to understand what it was.

Taking in the growth of Chas’ beard- he’d been clean-shaven for years, to John’s disappointment- John wonders when they acknowledged their love had come and gone. When Renee began to unmake their home. When Chas’ stubborn streak yielded to reality and the ring came off.

The ring itself was a simple band, John remembers. Renee’s was more ornate, but Chas works with his hands. Better to buy something easier to repair.

John’s awareness of the ring had ebbed and flowed, less dependent upon whether it was visible than whether Chas was standing too close. Yet looking at Chas’ hands now, John can’t help but feel that Chas is somehow off-kilter. His entire being is too light on one side.

When he looks back at John, Chas shrugs one shoulder. “Renee reached the end of what she could tolerate,” he explains. “She and Geraldine moved to Brooklyn- Renee has family there. And her work.”

“You don’t seem that bothered.”

Chas snorts. “It’s been almost a year. I’ve had time to adjust.”

There’s more to it than Chas is letting on. He’s too calm. Chas is never calm. Not when he can be angry.

Rather than point that out, John takes a swallow of his beer.

Chas’ eyes track the motion.

“A year, eh? Plenty of time to start shaking off the dust,” John points out, giving Chas a pointed once-over. “Mustn’t be difficult. Everybody wants the bartender, and what a catch you are. Who wouldn’t want to give you a little comfort, eh?”

Chas’ jaw clenches. “And?”

John fights to keep his expression still. He hadn’t actually thought Chas would have had it in him to find overnight company without John nudging him.

“Renee kept you wanting, I suppose.”

“The opposite,” Chas grates, and there’s a sharp look on his face. “Maybe if we’d kept our hands off each other, we would have seen what was right in front of us.”

And here they are once again, teetering on the brink of saying what neither of them has the guts to say.

This time, John is the coward.

“How’s Geraldine? She seemed rather attached to her home last I was here.”

Chas’ expression shifts. “She doesn’t like me much, but she did like getting to pet a horse.”

That’s a trap poorly disguised as a bush. John takes a long pull on his pint, then takes a heavy step onto the metaphorical leaves.

“You didn’t actually buy her a horse, did you?”

Chas gives him a flat look. “Where would she keep a horse in Brooklyn, John?”

“She’s very creative,” John points out. “Very much her mother’s daughter in that regard.”

“I rented the horse,” Chas says, cutting John off. “For her birthday.”

“You know that’s a very sad thing you did, don’t you?”

Chas shrugs, and finally, there’s a crack in his nonchalance. “She hasn’t been happy in a long time.”

“I imagine showing up with a horse made you father of the hour, though?”

“I wasn’t invited.”

John can’t fight the grimace his mouth twists into. He’s known Chas a long time, and Chas really does have too much affection in him to be healthy. The poor bastard just can’t show it in any of the ways the people he loves need him to.

The beer is getting warm, but John sips at it anyway as he considers Chas and the world around them.

In the end, he decides, it’s almost exactly the same.

Minus one critical detail.

Scratching at his jaw, John says, “I left the Navy.”

Chas frowns at him. “You what?”

“I left the Navy.” Chas gives him an incredulous look, and John rubs a hand over his face. “I’m getting too old to be sleeping in hammocks. I’ve no desire to climb the ranks. I’ve found a part of the world that has what I want.”

He’s clearly caught Chas by surprise. It feels good to see his oldest mate startled like he is; John hasn’t lost his knack for surprises.

“What part of the world?”

Chas’ hands are closed tight.

“I’d rather thought New York would suit me,” John drawls. “It does happen to be home to me best mate.”

“They still won’t let you back in Ibiza, huh?”

“Piss off. It was one pub.”

“It was more than that,” Chas argues goodnaturedly. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed back there either.”

“You do tend to follow me into things, don’t you?” John asks carelessly. “Wherever I go, you’re right there, getting your own name blacklisted, too.”

Chas goes quiet, his gaze heavy on John’s face.

“I don’t have a place to stay,” John hears himself say. “You still got that flat above the bar?”

Chas swallows. “I’ve been sleeping there, yeah.”

Knocking back the last of his pint, John sets the glass back on the bar and slides off the stool. He’s tired of the endless circling, and he’s tired of being a coward.

“Let me stay the night.”

It doesn’t sound like a command, which is good. Chas would tell him to fuck off if he thought John was trying to throw his weight around.

It doesn’t sound like a plea either. That’s good. John’s still got his dignity, whatever hell’s ugliest demons might say.

“Don’t the hotels have rooms?” Chas asks. “It’s not a busy time.”

“I’d rather stay here.” John holds Chas’ gaze. “Unless you’d like to stay in a hotel with me for a while?”

Chas stares at him, unspeaking, for a long moment. The weight of his gaze has become almost crushing; John can feel it growing heavier as Chas tries to work out the answer to whatever question he’s hung up on.

“I’ve only got one bed.”

“I’m not so big.”

“No, but I am.”

John is well aware that Chas is bigger than most. He hasn’t been able to get that fact out of his mind for years- he’s got himself into all sorts of trouble because of it. Chas was even present for some of it.

“We’ve shared before,” John points out, wishing Chas would just pick up on what John’s obliquely trying to say. “You’ve never had a problem sleeping next to me.”

Chas frowns, another of John’s attempts sailing over his head. “We were sixteen, and that hotel room had a double bed.”

Resisting the urge to grab Chas and shake the offer- request- into him, John squeezes the bridge of his nose.

“Chas.”

“John.”

“You’re making this very difficult.”

“Making what difficult?”

Chas isn’t unintelligent. He isn’t. If John stops for a moment and remembers the woman calling herself Chas’ mum, he can understand why Chas doesn’t engage with people emotionally. That isn’t stupidity; it’s self-protection. It’s what kept Chas going long enough to meet John.

It’s just difficult to remember all that and be patient when Chas is looking at him like John is the one who needs coddling.

_Fuck it._

John reaches toward Chas, who leans away.

“Would you stop making this more difficult?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Chas counters. “Why are you trying to grab my face?”

“Could you just trust me?”

Chas gives him a flat look.

Somehow more annoyed than desperate for Chas to come close, John gestures sharply at Chas. “Give me your head, Chas.”

Eyes narrowed, Chas leans in slowly until he’s just about halfway over the bar.

Finally close enough to get his hands on Chas, John cups his hands around Chas’ face and firmly guides Chas the rest of the way across so John only has stretch up a little to kiss him.

Chas’ soft, “Oh,” is muffled and does something not altogether pleasant to the kiss.

John briefly considers knocking Chas’ forehead because _of course_ this is what John wants. John’s shipmates had wondered about them, and John hadn’t spoken of Chas more than once or twice a voyage.

Fortunately for Chas, his choice to tilt his head and kiss John sends thoughts of anything other than the rasp of Chas’ beard out of John’s head.

Chas doesn’t waste time getting his hands on John, and he doesn’t hesitate to slip them under John’s shirt. His warm palms fit John’s hips as if John had been built to fit in Chas’ grasp.

It’s awkward, trying to do this with the bar between them. Chas is leaning heavily on John, trying to keep himself upright as he stretches over precariously. John can’t make himself stop kissing Chas long enough to suggest they move, though. The  feeling of the bruises he’ll have tomorrow forming is only serves to keep him rooted in place.

“Bed?” Chas mumbles eventually. He doesn’t quite manage to pull away.

“You’ve no idea how much I want to,” John says, finally pulling away enough to breathe. He keeps his hold on Chas just in case Chas gets some fool idea in his head.

If he also feels a burst of satisfaction seeing Chas bending to be held by him, then that’s for John to know.

“But?” Chas prompts, reminding John that he’d been speaking.

“But…” John replies, reaching mentally for the thought he started. It’s hard to think when Chas’ eyes are half-shut and he’s flexing his grip. “But I’m fresh off a ship, Chas. I’m disgusting. I’m tired. And I’m not about to make this a sloppy fuck.”

Chas considers that for a moment, his eyes dropping to take in as much of John as he can from his vantage point above. “I’ve got hot water yet,” he says slowly. “And there’s more than one way to make a mess.”

“I always knew you were smart,” John says, stretching up to kiss Chas again. He keeps it quick; they’re old enough that Chas will hold it against him if he gets a sore back from hunching over.

Leading Chas upstairs is easy.

Touching Chas is even easier.

Falling asleep under the weight of Chas’ arm on his tiny bed... less so. But as Chas shifts in his sleep and pulls John closer, letting out a happy little hum when he gets John just where he wants, the two of them wearing Chas’ boxers and smelling like Chas’ soap, John supposes he’s overcome tougher challenges for lesser rewards.

It’s good to finally be the one Chas is holding jealously, as if he hadn’t made John come three times between John’s arrival and the pub closing- each time with Chas’ name on his tongue. As if John hadn’t gotten to his knees and swallowed because he couldn’t let Chas leave their room without knowing.

As if John hasn’t spent more than half his life wanting to be the sort of man who comes home to open arms and falls asleep in them at night.

Chas is a wall of a person. The weight of his arm is unfamiliar, but the warmth of his body behind John is reassuring. John has seen a thousand nightmares at sea. Some of them, Chas shares; many, he does not. John touches the hand resting against his chest and thinks, irrationally, that nightmares will have a hard time reaching him with Chas wrapped around him.

Sighing, John lays his hand over Chas’ and lets his thoughts wander until, finally, he drifts off, clean and warm and content.


End file.
